Release 1.4.1 Notes

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Playing with Heavy Clip Hwacha...I was maybe able to get one part disable if that and that was pelting the same target with a full clip. It feels very weak.

Playing with Burst, I was able to get plenty. Heavy Clip feels very dead.

That said, Hwachafish feel very powerful because Stamina enables them to reload very quick and also keep pilot stamina refreshed more often. However, I don't think that needs to be nerfed. If anything the Goldfish should not be as tanky as it is if it is moving so fast. This was very evident when I was on some ships under 2v1s and our Fish just kept living through it all. Literally with multiple people rebuilding we had hull rebuilds as fast as squids and with how beefy it is we could make them work for the kill for a long time.

[Keyvias]

Hey Gilder,

What ranges are you firing at with the heavy clip?  Do you have any video?  I'd love to see what you're seeing and compare it to our test results to see what's different.

Thanks for the feedback (both the positive stuff and the critical eye it really does help us out!)

[Extirminator]

- Heavy Carronade
  -- Increased jitter to 6 degrees (from 4)
  -- Pitch arcs reduced to -20 to 10 (from -30 to 15)
  -- Reload time increased to 7.5s (from 5.5)
  -- Range reduced to 400m (from 425m)
  -- Direct damage increased to 17.5 (from 17)
  -- AoE damage reduced to 10 (from 18)

When you are saying that shatter damage was reduced to 10 from 18, with 20 buckshots - it needs to be 200. However, in  the wilson's notes it says 240. Do you means it was reduced to 12 and not 10?

[Extirminator]

Playing with Heavy Clip Hwacha...I was maybe able to get one part disable if that and that was pelting the same target with a full clip. It feels very weak.

Also you should be able to destroy a heavy gun, on average, considering you aim straight at the center of it's hit-box with heavy clip hwacha not buffed, within a distance of 586m. In that range you are guaranteed to destroy it statistically once every clip (15 shots) fired. And a bit farther away for components with less HP.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Hmm, hard to say. Within 500 I think it was. Wasn't in cqc range but it wasn't long. Although I shot some shots at long and still really didn't score anything. I switched ammo from HC pretty quick after I saw how poor it was. Used to get a guaranteed break with it. Heck even ranged, Burst was still better. I'd miss a bunch of shots but generally get a few parts.

[Richard LeMoon]

Stamina isn't very complex. Yes it does need to be clearly explained in game but it's not complicated: press shift to run faster, make your gun better, or boost your flying.

Chess is not complicated either in mechanics, yet people take lifetimes to learn it. Now add an extra piece or another row to the game. Still not complex rules, but will take much much longer to teach.

[BlackenedPies]

Hwatcha got a big buff and now burst is for all ranges. There's never a reason to use heavy anymore. If jitter is increased then heavy needs another buff to compensate.

The biggest problem with the UI is that the dots for the ship icons on compass don't indicate relative distance away.  The red and blue ship icons could be improved and I miss hull health being separated into sections to show % health. The score needs to be shown on the respawn map.

It's time to remove locking class in match. Leaving and rejoining as a different class doesn't work if your press the resume button, you have to join on someone. There's no reason to limit changing classes in match and add a not intuitive way to bypass it.

[LogHalley]

I liked this update >.< i've played a bit and as engineer, with stamina i almost never rebuild something by myself, as a pilot it's so much fun, i haven't tried as a gunner yet but being able to move around and still have your ammo loaded is nice.
My only, real, big issue is that the new compass doesn't tell me heights anymore. I used to spend more time watching that and the map than the actual game, but the new one in deathmatch is kind of pointless to me. I don't want the old one back, i just want it to work like it did, i could always perfectly put myself as high as the ship i was aiming for, or i could guess where the ships were just by looking at the compass and the map. I know not many people use it but i did :/

[IvKir]

I don't... feel sure about stamina. Sure, it's fun against, say, bots and etc. But in PVP? When junker became a kinda nullifier for squid (with stamina and claw you can keep enemy squid on needed side long enough to kill it's engines)
Speed boost for engineer is kinda... idea. But only if you non lagging.

And yeah, they.. fixed the Heavy Carronade. And then give gunner Stamina, which nullifies all nerf from patch. Brilliant.

But i like changes for new flamer mechanics and extinguisher. But UI is really very big. Why do i ever need a class sign in my left lover corner?

[Fynx]

After some playing and experimenting:

Stamina

Engineer stamina
Not a big change, it's nice to speed up the race to the hull sometimes, I like it.

Gunner stamina
Not a big change either - it's useful on some guns to speed up the reload a little bit or move lochnagar h. flak, but it doesn't unbalance anything. On the other side full buff engineer is still very useful in many many situations. Gatlings and carronades. Mercury. Hades. Even hwacha. And surprisingly heavy carro as well.

Pilot stamina
Now that's a big change - did some experimenting with that. Ramming is much more effective now, decreasing / increasing altitude with ships that have good vertical mobility (spire, mobula, squid) is insane. Dodging can be used much more often and is much more efficient (especially spires and squids). I like it.

Stamina in general
It's an additional factor that doesn't break the game but makes pilots have to think twice as fast. It makes dodging extremely easy in some situations and possible in others. It allows for unexpected faster reloads, arcs. Experienced engineers can now utilise their super hardcore tricks and not lock in the environment (yay!).
Inexperienced players who strive to understand the game mechanics cannot use this new feature to full extend. Because lots of stuff.
It's an additional layer of what can happen for the experienced players, too.


UI

Like in posts above this one, new UI is too obtrusive and it's more difficult to extract information from it.
I'm particularly unhappy about guns reloading - little ammo icon being greyed out and slowly filling up with white... previously it was a big circle with turning marker - I liked the previous version much more, much more visible.
Additional info like active pilot tool - that's awesome.


Carronades and carrorelated

As a dedicated blenderfish pilot I can put here quite a lot of thoughts (oh no you broke my toy).

What was h. carro before:
Overpowered fast balloon popping and additionally nicely armour stripping weapon capable of disabling any component with one shot at medium range. Capable of killing enemy on it's own.
What is h. carro now:
Average decently fast balloon popping gun with terrible arcs. Cannot be used without other weapons.

Nerfs:
- arcs
- power
- focus (heavy clip)

Arcs
Well this couldn't have been avoided. Though with other nerfs it's completely unnecessary.

Power
Now this is an issue for anyone thinking 'I can use h. carro only and ram them'. It's very difficult to keep enemies on the ground once you put them there.
It's very difficult to kill enemy ships that are already on the ground. You can ram them, but if they're using impact bumpers (or drogue chute?) it's not going to help much. I repeat: put an enemy ship on the ground, shoot it with heavy carro and ram it - the effect is going to be this ship flying away.

Heavy clip
Disables on weapons not possible anymore (except for extremely close range). It's still helpful against pyramidions, but trying to kill a pyra with a blenderfish now is a pain. I know, I've tried. The heavy clip general effect not good in my opinion. Especially that heavy clip hwacha is practically useless. Because burst.

What is now and what I think it should be
Blenderfish was destroying everything too fast. Balloons, armour, components. Now it's not very helpful in disabling components, has troubles with keeping the enemy balloon down and forget about additional armour stripping. It's still effective against big balloon enemies (junker, galleon, spire and nothing more) but then you just put a full buff engineer (no, not a gunner. why? because damage) on the front with charged / heatsink so the general damage is maximised. Ramming is much more needed now, in every encounter you'd think you need to avoid rams. So are side guns.
In my humble opinion what is now
- Balloon destruction speed is just fine. Still effective in many situations, but quite often not effective anymore.
- General damage is too low. I have an idea how to solve it...
- Heavy clip change is a bad thing. One thing is that it shouldn't be used against big balloon ships at all, second thing is it unbalanced burst hwacha.
And what to change
- Revert heavy clip changes, so the carro nerf doesn't make other guns stronger.
- Change carro (heavy and light) shatter damage to piercing and decrease it. This way carronades can't get instant disables and with flechette damage nerf it's still not so easy to grind enemies into the ground all the time. Even with stamina!


General thoughts

So many things that needed fixing were fixed. So many improvements. Nice work

[Steve CZ]

I'm worried why am I the only one talking about weird walking? Is it just me? o.O I am now unable to move effectively around the ship. If I make a sudden 180° turn, I stop completely and have to accelerate slowly again. Feels like ice skating -_- .

Also, I think someone meddled with FOV. sides of screen seem weirdly distorted. And when I mount a gun, I see it from further away than before (not a big problem).

To add some thoughts about stamina too: I still dont feel I need a gunner more now. Reload speed buff seems weak. With the new reload mechanic, it seems even better than before to use the reload time for repairing/buffing. Arcs buff seems pretty useless most of the time too. Light guns with bigger ammo clips don't need it. So again, you would bring the gunner for heavy guns only... or maybe not even that.

[Watchmaker]

Steve you are definitely not the only one to have noticed "weird walking."  There is definitely something peculiar going on, I suspect it is a side effect of changes I made (at the last minute) to reduce instances of getting stuck on railings.  I'm investigating (and, hopefully, fixing) this.

[Steve CZ]

Steve you are definitely not the only one to have noticed "weird walking."  There is definitely something peculiar going on, I suspect it is a side effect of changes I made (at the last minute) to reduce instances of getting stuck on railings.  I'm investigating (and, hopefully, fixing) this.

Thanks, it just felt weird it's not getting attention here, as it was the first thing that hit me

[HamsterIV]

So I rebound Stamina to right mouse, and the right mouse functions to middle mouse. My earlier cursing about finger gymnastics is now a bit moot. The Stamina powers on the gunner and pilot are interesting, however I didn't find much use for the engineer stamina especially with the grabbier ship geometry.

While the UI is not an offense to my eyes, I do miss the team indicator. Sometimes I forget if I am on red or blue, especially if I spent my time in lobby socializing.

The post match rematch/crewform is much better. I was able to take the same crew through several servers without getting hung up on endless waits on the match maker. It would be nice to have more post game pose off time without the commendation or Rematch screen covering my fancy duds. Many of us work hard to get our post apocalyptic fashion just right, the game should give us more time to flaunt it over out defeated opponents.

[evodoc]

While the UI is not an offense to my eyes, I do miss the team indicator. Sometimes I forget if I am on red or blue, especially if I spent my time in lobby socializing.

There are two ship icons right under the compass, and there should be an arrow above one of those indicating your team color.